Summary: Energy, Agriculture, and Environment in Rural New York
Abstract
For several years, Congress has been funding research on water quality in the Susquehanna River
basin in New York. Until 2009, these ear-marked funds supported the Agricultural Ecology
Program (AEP), with a primary goal of examining how agriculture affects water quality in the
Susquehanna, the major source of nutrient pollution to the highly impaired Chesapeake Bay. For
2010, the program was redefined and broadened to include energy systems as these interact with
agriculture and environment, and the geographic focus was expanded to include the Finger Lakes
region as well. The central goal of the re-named Agricultural, Energy, and Environment
Program (AEEP) is to understand the interaction of energy and agriculture as these affect
environmental quality in the rural environments of New York State in the 21st Century.
The Program continues research that supports the efforts of the State of New York in complying
with targets of reducing the State's contribution to nutrient pollution of Chesapeake Bay, as
required by the Clean Water Act and Presidential order. The expansion to more explicitly
consider the interactions of agriculture with energy is driven by two recent trends: 1) the
exponential increase in the production of biofuels and use of agricultural lands for biofuel
production over the past few years; and 2) the proposal by the State of New York that large parts
of the State, including all of the Susquehanna River basin, be opened up for gas development
using hydraulic fracturing. It simply is not possible to evaluate the sources and sinks of nutrients
and sediments in the upper Susquehanna River basin, and to develop improved approaches for